mwl168

I always use a thermistor for inrush current protection with my PSUs. If you use a thermistor I would try a 1A or even smaller fuse. You may have to experiment a bit based on the thermistor, filter caps of choice.

So they'll sell for enough money for me to retire abroad?

PM me if anyone in US is interested in sticking your neck out and give this a try. Keep in mind what actually ships may not be what’s in the photo and you can lose every penny invested.

I am holding on to my pre-Sonova HD650 and HD800. Someday they'll worth enough to pay for my retirement.

Toysrus?

PM me if you are still looking for boards. Also, you need a base board to assemble a PSU unless you have or plan to fabricate your own.

Hmm, that seems awfully high for the 2SK216. I was expecting 200V or slightly higher. Nice microscopic photos.

From an appearance stand point, the genuine 2SK216 I have all have the wider part of the pins being much longer than typical TO-220 parts. The one Jose shows does look the part (and consistent with the one James shows).

Happy Birthday Kevin 🎂

Audio Physic Medea II. Each speaker employees 3 Manger drivers and 3 Seas 10" drivers with a built-in amplifier for subwoofer. Crossed over at 120Hz.

You can buy the 2000uf ones for a cool $700 a pop.

Can I roll the “tubes”?

To date I've soldered all the SMD applications using a fine-tip soldering iron and a fine tip tweezer. I also find using very small gauge solder is key - I use .02"/3mm diameter solder from Kester with 2% silver and it works great. You can get a small tube of this solder from Mouser offered by NTE. I can try dig out the part number if you are interested. I want to experiment with a hot air station but have not done so yet. Mostly because I could to decide how much to spend and which one to get. Even the very basic one from the trusted brand (JBC, Hakko, etc.) costs an arm and a leg.

One thing I recommend is to watch a few of Youtube videos on soldering technics if you have not already done so. Pace put on a few videos that I like very much. Electrostatic amps like the Carbon operate on very high voltages which makes them rather unforgiving with less than tedious soldering job. In many threads here you will find information about cleaning solder flux, etc. that are good practice to follow. I would further recommend getting good quality soldering station and solder. It’s very good investment for serious DIYers.

This can end very badly! You are dealing with very high, unforgiving voltage here, a small misstep can easily turn into a catastrophic disaster. I advise you to consider if you are willing and prepared to deal with such consequence before you continue to proceed down this path.

Agree that measuring an amplifier with a device in a store isn’t practical. Assuming the ultimate goal here is to find an amp that you like the sound the most, I would pick one or two good recordings that I am very familiar with, keeping the front end and headphone consistent and simply listen to the different amps at the volume you like and as consistent as you can sense and go back and forth as needed. Then go with the one you like the most overall. Make sure the front end and amps are properly warmed up when you do this.

I tie the ground of the PSU together when I do a dual mono amp - one wire that goes from the output ground of one PSU to that of the the other one and then, from there, a single wire to the chassis. I do the same thing when tying the LV and HV PSU ground together. So far this has worked well for me. But I typically do not install a volume pot on my headphone amps.

I am curious - what don't you like about the threaded clamp? I like mine on the TNT, it does a good job coupling the record to the platter and works well if the record is very mildly warped. For more severely warped record, I use a peripheral ring and a heavy brass center weight (have to take the washer off the spindle that works with the threaded clamp). I do stop the platter when I change record.

VPI TNT and Tri-Planar arm from 1994. Shelter 901 cartridge.

A Christmas gift from my son.

Maybe it’s fairer to jail the naughty one?

Matching P channel and N channel is very challenging even you have a large supply of both. Agree with Pars that it's not really required for this application. If you already use dip socket for the THAT340 you can simply plug in the SK170/SJ74 into the dip socket with some leg bending. There should be some photos showing how this is done in the Balanced Dynahi build thread. found the photo so I'll show it here...

Happy Birthday!

Switched from Megatron to the Blue Hawaii this morning. Different sound signature but equally as satisfying. This one is not the BJT version but the one that uses 2SK216/2SJ79 with cascoded CCS and adjustable plate current.